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Schlossman's Blog: DU vs. UND Drew Strong Ratings

Friday night’s game was the highest-rated college game on NBC Sports Network this season, drawing about 86,000 viewers for a game that started at 10 p.m. Eastern. The primetime game — Boston University vs. Vermont — drew 38,000.

Saturday night’s game was broadcasted by Root Sports Rocky Mountain and it also was that network’s highest-rated game of the year in the Denver market.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

86,000 viewers on a national broadcast is still a tiny, tiny number.

It costs at least $25,000 to produce a game for national consumption. That works out to about 35 cents per viewer. Don't know what the ad sales are, but long term, college hockey will likely not be a sustainable prime time option if NBC sports network is expecting to turn a profit in prime time.

For comparison, the NCAA final usually draws about 1-2 million viewers.

NBC Sports Network uses double the number of cameras than a typical Root Sports broadcast at Magness. --------Supposedly, DU is not happy with Root Sports-Rocky Mountain. They have been charging DU for Hoops and Hockey coverage in recent seasons.

For years, FCS-Rocky Mountain broadcast the games for free and made money off of subscribers and advertising. So this situation may come to a head this offseason.

DU does not have any existing regional TV network options beyond Root Sports, unless they were to buy or build their own network, like BYU did. Given all the serious cable money that's been poured into DU over the years by broadcast media people like Ritchie, Daniels, Magness and Myhren, I am suprised they didn't set up their own TV channel. They could do sports and fine arts at night, and academic stuff by day

DU hockey has a TV fan base of perhaps 10,000-15,000 people. They can't generate enough ratings to offset the costs, so they have to charge DU for air time, and DU wants the exposure so it must cough up the money.

Perhaps DU would be content next season with just the occasional CBS or NBC games?

I guess the point is, DU feels like they are being bled dry by Root Sports. Root Sports is owned by DirecTV and they make their money off of subscriptions and a little advertising. Ratings aren't a huge component of the formula. I shudder every time I think about what I spend on DirecTV on an annual basis and its all to get DU hockey.

Altitude is owned by Kroenke Sports and their priority are Avalanche and Nuggets games, teams that they own. 90% of DU weekend games would not be able to be shown live due to Avs/Nugs time conflicts. They do have an auxillary channel called altitude2, but its not a full time channel on most carriers, and some networks don't carry it at all.

tangentially, the 'growing pains' of NBC, specifically in the booth, are painful, indeed. Trying (a) find their 'voice' and (b) analysts with the know and pizazz... As for the NHL Ref retread/retiree, all one need know is he voted for Obama, if that explains his points of view...

The ratings were high because it was UND. I am not trying to stir the pot, but their fans around the country tend to follow UND religiously. All of their home games are on FCS and there is a reason for that. Too bad NBC Sports will be the Notre Dame Network....would love to see more WCHA/NCHC in HD!!!